Rest Is An Obstructed Fall

in the weeks following his sudden absence,

you wake up every morning with dull pain

occupying strange places on your body

like the area between two nonexistent toes,

or the skin that separates your nose from your mouth

you begin to derive comfort from the fact that

everything in your life is potentially something

but you quickly discover there is nothing glamorous

about allowing someone new to think you are beautiful

about watching him perform vaguely reciprocated acts onto you

about facing away from his blind and motionless body

while you are kept awake by the knowledge that

your own life is distancing itself from you

Derive Comfort From Calculated Distance

in your presence i came to discover
that you don’t have to love yourself to love another person
you only have to acknowledge that both people are in pain

in my presence you learned
that you can’t rely on others for your own fulfillment

why would you allow someone else to disappoint you
when it’s so comfortable to disappoint yourself?

i could tell that you liked my company
you probably even loved me

so, during our last few nights together
we created an enormous empty space
and we filled it with the impossibility
of expressing all the things we claimed to express
through art, and through language
or, through language as art

i guess that space we created still exists, somewhere

because unlike you,
i never stopped reaching towards the hallow idea of us

hopefully one day i will find meaning
in struggling to remember a sudden shift in our power dynamic

for now, at least i am able to recognize that distance is created
when two people stop allowing thoughts to control their feelings

don’t worry, this poem will be over soon too

but first i want to say that i hope you remember my childhood bed
because i remember yours

and i hope you know that i want us to feel the same pain
as much as i want us to feel the same innocence